In southeast Louisiana, crews are laboring hard to build miles of new fortifications to defend the region against another Hurricane Katrina-like disaster. But as local flood-protection officials learned last month, understanding and applying the evolving science of storm-surge and flood risk modeling is an even tougher race.
“What we know about storm surge is changing faster than most science and engineering today,” says Robert Turner Jr., a civil engineer and regional director of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, one of two consolidated levee boards in New Orleans formed in 2005 after Katrina devastated the region. “We have to be vigilant and re-evaluate periodically to make sure we have the protection we think we have.”